How to Get YouTube to Load Faster on Microsoft Edge. (Speed Up YouTube)

A short tutorial showing you how to get around the cunning Google feature that slows down YouTube loading times on Microsoft Edge. A sneaky aspect of YouTube’s latest material design that has increased all YouTube video load times on all competitive browsers, Edge, Firefox, Safari etc.

As browsers like Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox get faster, more reliable, and use fewer resources, Google has found itself under increasing pressure to innovate. And innovate they have! In a sneaky move Google has made some subtle changes to YouTube’s coding which causes considerably slower loading times for all competitive browsers, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera etc. Whilst still remaining super fast when viewed using Chrome.

Chris Paterson, a program manager at Mozilla, states that the issue isn’t browser related and is the direct result of Google’s decision to use a deprecated shadow DOM API, which can now only be found in Chrome. The end result being a 5 times slower service on all other browsers. If you have a strong Internet connection you probably won't notice it all that much, however, anyone with slower connections will notice the difference dramatically. Thankfully there is a way to get around the cunning YouTube slowdown on Microsoft Edge, so follow along as we guide you through the process.

How Do You Make YouTube Load Faster on Microsoft Edge?

As you may have already suspected for the first part of this process you will need to download a small extension from the Windows Store. The extension is called Tampermonkey and allows you to quickly and easily make the changes required to get YouTube working without a slow down. Although the process may look a little complicated it’s really only a few clicks.

Once you have added/installed Tampermonkey to Edge, you’ll need to make sure it is enabled, so click the icon in the extension area of Edge and select Turn it on. If you don’t see an icon or popup, you can find it under Settings > Extensions.

Next, you’ll need to visit Openuserjs to download the script, which will force YouTube to restore the classic version. To install/add the script to Tampermonkey simply click Install on the page, then Install on the next page to confirm the installation.

Note:During the process you may get an error message stating that the page can’t be found but the installation will complete fine.

After the installation, Restart Edge, and YouTube will load the old style and without any speed dampening penalties. If at any stage you wish to revert back to the new material design with the speed restrictions, you can either uninstall Tampermonkey or flip the toggle within the extension to disabled.

Hopefully, in the near future, other browsers will be able to bypass Google’s YouTube speed restrictions. If you don’t always use Microsoft Edge and would like to bypass Google’s YouTube speed restrictions or just change back to the old layout on another browser, check out the following guides.